The Journalist by Harry Mathews A Novel

The Journalist is a compendium of creature comforts, and a strangely touching study of obsession. Details, the narrator says, are the texture of life. This a richly textured novel — humane, wise, and immensely enjoyable.
-NPR

Synopsis

The narrator's desire to record all of his experiences gradually becomes an obsession that overwhelms his real life and generates distrust of all those around him.

Harry Mathews was born and raised on New York's Upper East Side but left America for France in 1952 shortly after graduating from Harvard. He has written over a dozen books including the novels "Cigarettes, The Journalist", and "Tlooth", along with collected stories, "The Human Country", and essays, "The Case of the Persevering Maltese". Mathews is also the only American member of the Oulipo the Workshop for Potential Literature France's longest, and most active, literary movement. He divides his time between Paris, Key West, and New York.

Critic reviews for The Journalist
All: 1 | Positive: 1 | Negative: 0

NPR

Reviewed by Patrick deWitt
on
Feb 20 2012

The Journalist is a compendium of creature comforts, and a strangely touching study of obsession. Details, the narrator says, are the texture of life. This a richly textured novel — humane, wise, and immensely enjoyable.